Blue Link Differentiators

You will find that many systems cover the basics fairly well but there are differences between them that can be crucial. Our analysis was conducted a few years ago for a seminar presented at the Financial Technology Show. We will endavour to provide an update to our analysis in the near future.

Target Market

Small to medium-sized companies with 5 to 50 employees. Bluelink is an out-of-the-box solution for small and mid-sized distributors of durable goods and for wholesalers and distributors in the food industry.

Perfect Fit Methodology

25% of new (last 6 months) Bluelink clients have had customization. Bluelink will fix price the update of customization at a percentage of the original custom fee (usually 20%). Blue Link is shifting away from customization to providing components that were initially customizations for one customer, but now are available to all customers.

Perfect Fit Components

Blue Link has 15 different components including back order fulfillment, intercompany transfers, sales order accruals, commision management with complex commission calculations, and lot tracking.

Competitive pricing

Bluelink is 25-40% less expensive than products with similar features running under Microsoft SQL Server.

Access

The front end/user interface is built with Access. Access provides a rapid application development environment, and is integrated with Microsoft office products. The system was developed from the beginning for Windows.

Scalable

Bluelink uses Microsoft SQL Server as its database.

Distribution

Functionality includes RMA's, drill down to customer orders and purchase orders, and landed cost.

Landed cost

The system will allocate landed cost based on quantity, dollars, weight, volume or a custom allocation. Variances between estimated and actual are tracked in a variance account.

Warehouse Fill Screen

Warehouse screens are optimized for warehouse personnel. They only see the essential information and data is entered with minimal keystrokes.